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Forum

Ixquick

Hi,

I have started using the search engine Ixquick. However, I
notice that this website uses many domains (us.ixquick.com,
us2.ixquick.com, etc.). I keep stumbling upon real Ixquick domains
that seem fine to me that seem to be rated dangerous for some
reason.

This is one: s2-us2.ixquick.com/

I see no problem with this. It's user confidence rating is low,
but I'd still like to know why it is rated so badly.

Maybe it could be a case of search engine abuse.
I found this short text that describes a google-example:

"Google abuse - Who feels lucky here?

Today I got this spam mail, that at first looked too
simple.
But when I looked twice, I noticed it was actually
opposite:

"Check it out - I just found the best casino website! It has
great games, tournaments, daily promotions and high bonuses. If you
go there now you'll get a free beginners bonus of $555 - so you can
start playing right away! Have fun!"

Casino spam is not news at all, but the deceptive link
was.
Instead of linking directly to casino-games-pro.com it used
this:

So, basically, it was flagged by PhishTank as phising because it
had a phising link in their search results. That just doesn't seem
very likely. Google has thousands of phising links and malware
links, but they are not rated badly by sources because of it.

Thanks though! As long as I know that Ixquick has no malware,
I'm going to continue using it.

Footnote: I just found out that Ixquick had a contract with
Overture.
Overture was bought out by Yahoo - it's a sponsored links (paid
ads) feature.
Maybe someone found a malware / phish sponsored link and laid it at
Ixquick's door?

So, basically, you're saying that in Ixquick search results
there might have been an infected ad which would lead to a phising
website?

That's probably true, but why would they rate Ixquick badly, why
not just rate the phising website bad?

Also, Yahoo! does use Overture, because GoodSearch.com powered
by Yahoo! does.

Thanks for doing all this research! Personally, I think that
PhishTank has a false positive, but I'm curious to find out
more.

One question: If WOT only uses Google Adsense (ratings do not
show for text ads in Yahoo!), then how do sponsor results get rated
in Ixquick if they use Overture like Yahoo!? Also, I believe that
about a month ago WOT did rate Yahoo! sponsored results.